THH, Thornton Hay Field, January 20, 2023

 Wally and I were out with THH this morning. It was bright, sunny and temperatures in the 40's. The problem was the wind was absolutely howling. The only way something was going to happen was if the hounds stumbled upon a fox in some place the wind couldn't reach. But that didn't happen.

My plan today was to come in early since my back went out a week ago and was injected on Tuesday. It was feeling pretty good but better to be safe than sorry. So when Beth and the hounds took a turn towards the mountain, I decided it was time to go in.

I picked up Wally at a trot and he moved off. He went right past the third flight and kept trucking down the farm road. We eventually got to the main road and walked in from there. He just quietly walked along by himself. So that was great. He keeps showing that he is very independent from the rest of the hunt field.

As we were coming in, there as a loud gunshot from close by. Wally stopped and looked toward the shot. I figured that was a great reaction as he was by himself and in high winds. No spook, just a look and he walked on.

Just before we got to the trailers we could hear Beth's horn as she was gathering hounds. Wally kept cocking his head to listen. We were back at the trailer when we could hear the horn really clear. He was funny, he turned and got really tall and was looking for the hounds. He has really learned to pay attention to the hounds and what they are doing, and that the horn is the signal.

We covered 7.4 miles. We had a brief canter where wally put in a real metronome canter at 16.4 MPH. It was quite the nice canter as it was the same on the flat or going up the hill or down.

So not any hunting action but he got show more development a sa hunt horse.